MH17 investigators publish picture of BUK nozzle found at crash site

DutchNews, June 6, 2016 

A fragment of the BUK missile. Picture: JIT

The team investigating the shooting down of Malaysian Airways flight MH17 has published a picture of a fragment of BUK missile found at the crash site. 

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said thepicture showed the nozzle of a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) has already concluded in its examination of the plane that a BUK model 9N314M was responsible for the crash. 

The identification of the missile was one of the pieces of evidence the DSB relied on in finding that the plane was shot down by a Russian-made missile which struck the cockpit from the left. All 298 people on board the plane died when it was hit while flying over Ukraine on July 17, 2014 on its way to Kuala Lumpur. Two-thirds of the passengers were Dutch nationals. 

Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative website Bellingcat, pointed out on Twitter that the nozzle had been found last year. The picture was used by DSB chairman Tjibbe Joustra when he presented the board’s conclusions last October, Higgins said. 

A team from the public prosecution department is currently trying to work out exactly where the missile was fired from so it can bring the perpetrators to justice. Russia has consistently denied that it had any involvement in the attack and rejected claims that pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine were responsible.